The Clone Wars Returns!

The Clone Wars 10th Anniversary panel at San Diego Comic-Con made big news yesterday as it was announced that the show would be returning with 12 new episodes! The Clone Wars was broadcast for 5 seasons before it was cancelled, though a couple of completed story arcs were released as “The Lost Missions”, while 2 other arcs were released in their incomplete form and others were adapted into the novel Dark Disciple and the comic book Darth Maul – Son of Dathomir.

With the show having been originally broadcast on Cartoon Network and so many unfinished story arcs adapted into other formats, I honestly never thought that The Clone Wars would return – as much as I wanted to see more – but the positivity and continued support from fans paid off and now the show appears to be getting the conclusion that it always deserved on the new Disney streaming platform.

Along with the announcement, there was a trailer released to help us get even more excited for the show’s return. The official trailer can be found here. The trailer doesn’t show much, but it gives us some wonderful hints as to what we may be getting over the 12 episodes.If you don’t want to know anything, even speculation, do not read on!

The final sequence in the trailer heavily hints towards the Siege of Mandalore arc, due to Anakin & Obi-Wan’s appearances being the same as in Revenge of the Sith and the characters of Ahsoka and Bo-Katan. The new poster for the show also points towards this. This arc featured partially in flashbacks during the novel Ahsoka and was also discussed by Dave Filoni at Star Wars Celebration Europe 2016 during the “Ahsoka’s Untold Tales” panel – he actually made Ashley Eckstein cry onstage! This was due to be the series finale for the Clone Wars as it directly involved Anakin and Obi-Wan being called back to Coruscant to rescue Chancellor Palpatine, so I imagine that this will continue to be the finale and mean that we will get no other episodes beyond these 12.

The other sequence of footage in the trailer is a bit harder to predict. It is reminiscent of a tracking shot in the unfinished episode “The Bad Batch”, the first of 4 episodes in the Bad Batch arc and the location is definitely the same – a Republic base on Anaxes. The trooper walking with Anakin and Rex also looked like Hunter, who was the leader of the Bad Batch in that arc. This makes me wonder if the show will be made up of the 2 partially animated arcs that were released to the public – Crystal Crisis on Utapau and the Bad Batch – and the Siege of Mandalore arc. However, as the shot is different to what was shown in the episode, it may be that this is actually a different arc containing the same characters in the same location, or it could be that the arcs have been streamlined and adapted to take less episodes and allow more story arcs to be told.

At the moment we have very little information about the new episodes. It is always possible that they will be longer than in the show’s original run, allowing them to tell more stories in the same number of episodes. There are a number of other story arcs that have been teased previously by Dave Filoni and were at varying stages of development when the show was cancelled, so it is highly possible that some of these could feature:

Boba Fett teaming up with Cad Bane on a rescue mission, eventually leading to Fett causing an insurrection ended with a stand-off duel which left Fett with the famous dent in his helmet

Ahsoka being drawn into the criminal underworld and facing the Pyke Syndicate

Yoda and the Bad Batch fighting on Kashyyyk – this would have involved the Wookiees having to burn part of their forest to stop the Separatists and showed their general Tarfful speaking to the tree spirits for permission

An arc described as “Top Gun with clones” that involved Rex and R2-D2 piloting a Starfighter and becoming stranded on one of Ryloth’s moons

A Yuuzhan Vong scout ship appearing to assess the strength of the Republic and the Jedi, described as similar to an episode of the X-files. Unlike in Legends, the Yuuzhan Vong were not going to be immune to the Force.

Of these, I would imagine the first 3 are more likely as the Sith Temple has appeared in James Luceno’s Tarkin novel, while unfinished footage including the voice acting has been shown for the others. Regardless of what the episodes are, I’m just glad we’re going to get another chance to see all our favourite characters again. Disney, you’ve got another person sold on the streaming service!

What are your thoughts on the news The Clone Wars is returning? What are you hoping to see from these episodes? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading and May the Force be with you…